Murder in the Apocalypse
by cicijan28
Summary: A gunshot is heard on a quiet day, prompting a search and the realization that someone in the camp is a murderer. An AU mystery story I wrote for a class, but thought it would be good to share. Rated M for gore and talking about depression, suicide, killing, and abuse.


**Here's a fanfic thing that I wrote for my forensics class. Don't be too harsh on me. It's way different than what I'm used to writing, and I threw it together in one day. Enjoy**.

Chapter 1

Everything seems to be at a standstill. Nothing moves very much. Even the people around the small camp are sitting in the shade, protecting themselves from the hot Georgia sun. It's August now, and the heat is almost unbearable. Animals aren't showing themselves, so hunting is useless. The only thing to do is lie around and wait.

That is probably the worst thing about the apocalypse. There's no entertainment. Newspapers and magazines don't print, and the people in the old ones are probably dead. Or worse. There's no television, and the generators are powering the lights and necessary machines. Even so, the past days have slowed down since they got to the farm. There have been no attacks, and everyone's spirits have been lifted by the fresh food. There are only so many canned goods one can eat before feeling sick.

The laziness of the day is quickly ended, though. Off in the west field, Dale spots a figure ambling towards the camp. The old man hollers down from the top of the R.V. and everyone is quickly on their feet and grabbing weapons.

For those who don't know, these things happened in the days when the dead came back to life, but not as themselves. Some kind of pathogen had infected people, making them sick and taking over their brains when they died. That wouldn't be so bad, but the infected bodies then began to spread the disease by biting other people. If they can't get away, the humans would be devoured by what they called walkers.

Now, one of these walkers was coming towards camp. No one liked to get up close to kill them, and shooting off a gun would attract more of them. Someone had to kill this threat, and that person was Shane Walsh.

The former King County officer grabbed his knife and jogged out to the corpse. It reached out towards him, trying to grab a hold of him. Its flesh was rotting and peeled back on the fingers, and its nails were falling off. As it lunged for him, Shane moved quickly, stabbing his knife through the side of its skull, hearing the sickening sound of the temporal bone breaking.

The walker fell to the ground as Shane pulled the knife out of its skull. He never felt bad about killing these things, but it was hard work to get rid of the bodies. They had to burn them to make sure they were dead. He knelt down next to the body and stabbed his knife through its head again, to make sure there wouldn't be any surprises when he started dragging it back to the burn pile.

Shane wiped his knife blade on the walker's shirt to get the blood off, then put it away. He grabbed the body by the legs and stood, starting to drag it in the direction of the burn pile. Before he even got to his feet, the sound of a gunshot rang out, coming from the woods nearby. He dropped the legs and ran back to camp.

Chapter2

Everyone met at the R.V. Some were frightened; others thought that this could mean that help was coming. There could be people out there who could help, or needed something. They couldn't just leave whoever it was out there. Deciding to go, everyone went into the R.V. to get their weapons.

Shane and his partner Rick Grimes decided that they would go out and investigate the source of the gunshot. Daryl, Andrea, and Glenn decided to go with them. As they got ready to go, Herschel came out of the house.

"Why did I hear a gunshot?" The old man asked. Since they were staying on his land, they had agreed not to carry guns with them. They kept knives and other weapons with them to protect them from the walkers"It wasn't us," Rick said. "We only have our guns because we're going to go see who shot. We'll put them right back."

Herschel agreed to let them go out into the woods and told them to be careful. T-Dog and Dale decided to stay back and guard the camp. The group headed out into the woods, looking for the source of the sound.

They fanned out so they were able to cover more ground. Rick and Shane went to the left, Glenn and Andrea went to the right, and Daryl went up the middle. They hoped they could find whoever it was, and that they were alright. Maybe they could help them.

Rick and Shane walk together for a while, then hear the sound of walkers up ahead. They go a bit farther and see a group of walkers surrounding a run down cabin. The walkers notice them and start towards them, but each one is taken down with a shot to the head. A few more of the creatures hear the sound of the gun and come out from the building, but are killed as well.

Rick and Shane walk towards the building, guns raised. It's too dark to see, so Rick shines a flashlight inside. As he shines it around the room, he sees something which leaves him gagging.

Chapter 3

The scene inside the cabin is grotesque. There is blood on the walls and the stench of the rotting walker bodies is heavy. That is not the worst part, though. In the back of the room, a body lay on the ground. It isn't a walker, but it is dead. The limbs were torn from the torso, and the abdomen and chest had been torn open, revealing bone and the bloody insides. Most of the guts had been eaten or were on the floor. The only part that seemed relatively untouched was the face. The eyes were wide open, staring blankly. They knew her. She was one of them. The dead woman was Carol Peletier, one of the people who had been with the group for the longest.

Hearing movement coming towards them, they turned around to see the others in their search party coming towards them. They must have heard the gunshots and got worried.

"What is it?" Andrea asked, slightly out of breath.

"Carol," Rick said sadly. "She's dead."

The others seemed shocked. They looked inside only to move away quickly. Glenn looked like he might throw up at any moment. He turned around and walked back to camp, followed by Andrea.

"I need to know what happened," Daryl said. He had been close with Carol, closer than anyone else, even her own husband. That wasn't a surprise though. Her husband was an abusive jerk.

Daryl went inside and kneeled down next to the body. He looked at her and closed her eyes and smoothed her hair back. Doing this, he found a bullet hole in her forehead.

"Guys," he said, making Rick and Shane go inside. "She was shot in the head. In her forehead." He pointed to the hole. "Someone did this." His face changed from sad to angry.

"Hold on, Daryl," Shane said. "We can't just jump to conclusions here. It is possible that some one did this, but she could have done this herself."

"She wouldn't do this," Daryl said. "She was strong, she wouldn't give up."

"It's a possibility. And very possible. Her husband was abusive. She's lost everything she ever cared about, and her daughter just went missing. That's a lot to be depressed about. What we need to do is look for a gun. The walkers could have kicked it around. If there isn't one, then someone else shot her."

They started looking around the cabin and outside it for a gun. On the other side of the room, they found a bullet casing, but there was no weapon around. She must have been murdered.

Chapter 4

Later that day, they bring the body back to be buried. They keep everything wrapped up so no one has to see it. Daryl busies himself with digging a hole to put her in. Everyone else is mourning the loss of another friend. Even Carol's husband seems a bit distraught, although that might be because of the fact that he had no one to hit now.

Shane approaches Rick after about an hour of being back. He wants to know how they should do this. If there is a murderer in the camp, they need to be dealt with. Even though they kill walkers, killing innocent people is something they can't live with.

"I think we should round everyone up who's a suspect and ask them where they were today," Shane said. "We need to know who did this."

"We don't need to scare everyone," Rick countered. "If we're going to question people, it has to be quiet and we don't want them to know she was murdered.. That will turn everyone against each other. We can't have that."

Agreeing to keep this quiet, The two men go to the funeral. After wards, Shane makes a list of suspects, the main suspect being Ed Peletier, Carol's husband. Everyone else on the list were the people they didn't see around the time the gunshot was heard.

Chapter 5

Rick went back to the scene of the crime, trying to find anything they may have missed. He looks at the wall behind where the body was, seeing the spatters of blood and brain tissue. While looking closer, he finds the bullet that had killed her, lodged into the wall.

He took out the bullet and kept it as evidence, then continued to look around. It seemed as though someone had fought with Carol before, because a few small clumps of her hair were on the ground. Maybe there had been a fight that got out of hand.

Taking the bullet back to the RV, Rick sat down inside and compared it to bullets from their stash. It matched the caliber of one specific gun, which belonged to Andrea.

When Rick found Andrea, she was on watch. He walked up next to her and asked her where her gun was. He didn't see it on her.

"I don't know," Andrea said. "I went to go get it when we were going out to investigate the gunshot, but I couldn't find it, so I took a spare one. I figured that I must have misplaced it, and I didn't want to bring it up now. We've got other things to worry about than a misplaced gun."

Rick nodded and walked away. If Andrea was telling the truth, she hadn't done it. Someone had taken her gun and used it to kill Carol. There was no motive for her to do it anyway. Andrea had been the one to defend Carol against her husband and they were friends. It wouldn't make any sense. He crossed her name off the list.

Meanwhile, Shane went to see Ed and ask him a few questions. The two men never really got along. Ed's attitude annoyed him, and the fact that he liked to hit his wife and daughter just gave him one more reason to dislike him.

"Hey, Ed, can we talk?" Shane asked, going over to him. The widower was sitting in a lawn chair, drinking a can of beer. He nodded slightly, staring off at the trees.

"Thanks," Shane said, looking at him. "In the past few days, have you noticed Carol acting strange?"

"She was worried about Sophia," he said. "Of course she was acting strange."

"Did you two fight at all recently?"

"No. She was just quiet all the time. There was nothing to fight about."

"Where were you yesterday morning?"

"I don't know. Around camp. I think I was either here or near the fire pit." He looked up at the other man. "Are you accusing me of killing her? Why would I do something like that?"

"I don't know, Ed," Shane said. "Do you have a reason?"

"I sure as Hell don't," Ed said angrily. "I may have been hard on her, but I would never kill somebody. Least of all my own family."

"Alright," Shane said, turning around and going back to camp. He met up with Rick near the center of camp.

"Ed said he has nothing to do with Carol's death," Shane said. "I don't know if we can believe him or not, so we won't cross that one off the list just yet."

"Alright. The bullet that killed her matched Andrea's gun, but she said her gun was missing from the RV when she went to go find it to go with us," Rick said. "She wouldn't have a motive anyway. They were friends. She protected her from Ed."

"So the murder weapon was stolen. That means it could be anybody."

"Did you say murder?" Carl asked, walking up to them. He was Rick's son, and he was always where he wasn't supposed to be. "Carol was murdered?"

"Yes," Rick said. "But we're trying to keep that a secret, alright."

"Ed couldn't have done it. I saw him yesterday, just before the gunshot. He was sitting near the fire pit. And Andrea was going towards the barn."

Rick and Shane looked at each other. "Do you remember who was around and who wasn't?" Shane asked.

"I don't know," Carl said. "I only saw those two because I passed them when I was going to the chicken coop to help mom."

They thanked him and told him to go on and play, then crossed off Ed and Andrea from the list.

Chapter 6

Days went by, and still there were no answers. Everyone in the camp was questioned, and it seemed like they all had an alibi. The gun was still missing, but Rick didn't want to search anybody's things unless they had reason to suspect them. That would just cause mistrust.

Every day, Rick went back to the cabin where they had found the body, looking for anything they could have missed. He found nothing. There had been footprints there before, but they were covered by walker tracks and he could tell nothing about them.

It was nighttime, three days after Carol was murdered. Everyone was sleeping, except for Rick. He was on watch. Thinking about how hey wouldn't get any answers drove him crazy. He was desperate now, and what he did next was definitely an act of desperation.

Rick got down from atop the RV and grabbed a shovel. He walked out into the field, to Carol's grave. He didn't want to do this, but he had to. Just one more attempt at solving what happened.

He said a silent apology before he started digging. Luckily, they only buried their people three to four feet under the ground, so it didn't take too long. Soon, the smell of the decomposing body hit his nose. He pulled his shirt up and covered his mouth and nose, which didn't help too much, but anything would do.

When the body was uncovered, Rick turned on his flashlight and pulled the cloth off that was covering it. Looking at the rotting corpse made him want to throw up, but he held it in. If anything was left, it would be hard to find.

Rick had no clue what he was even looking for. It was useless. Why had he done this in the first place? He went to get up, but dropped his flashlight. It landed next to Carol's hand, shining on it. He knelt down to pick it up, and noticed a few strands of hair that were caught under the fingernails. He took them out and saw that they were blond in color. There were only four blond people here. Patricia, who was Herschel's wife. Rick didn't know much about her, only that she tended to stay in the house or barn. Beth, who was Herschel's daughter, but she couldn't hurt a fly. Andrea was blond, but she wasn't near the crime scene when it happened. The only other blond person left was Amy, Andrea's sister. She seemed an unlikely suspect, but he had to talk to her.

In the morning, Rick and Shane made a plan. Rick would talk to Dale and ask him if he saw her anywhere before the gunshot was heard. Then, he would question Amy, and Shane would go search her tent for any evidence. They would try and get her to confess.

Going over to the RV, Rick talked with Dale for a while. He learned that they only people who had been in the RV before the gunshot were him, Glenn, and Amy. Thanking him, Rick went out to find Amy.

He found her near the fire pit, bringing logs over.

"Amy, can I talk with you for a moment?" Rick asked. She agreed and went wit him, just a ways away so the others couldn't hear them. "Were you in camp when Carol died?"

"No," she said, looking down at the ground.

"Where were you, then?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question." This took Rick by surprise. Was she admitting to killing her?

"What happened?"

Amy took a deep breath, seeming to calm herself. "I was angry and sad," she said. "And I loved Carol's daughter like a little sister. I had always wanted to have someone to take care of, and when Sophia went missing, I just realized that it's all hopeless."

"What do you mean?" Rick asked. He didn't understand.

"I was sick of this. I mean, I had had problems in the past. I was depressed before, but never this bad. So I stole Andrea's gun and went into the woods. I knew there was a small cabin back there, and I didn't want to be disturbed. I was going to shoot myself. But I guess Carol had followed me there. She tried to stop me by grabbing my hair and trying to pull the gun away. I fought her and the gun went off. I guess it was facing her. I was so shocked, I didn't know what to do, so I just ran away. I didn't even tell anyone."

Just then, Shane came over to them. In his hands was a bloody shirt and Andrea's gun. The case was solved, but not in the way they thought it would be.


End file.
